August 09, 2006

I know it’s not the politically correct thing to say, but old people are ruining everything for the rest of us. They should do themselves a big fucking favor and die already.

They get in the fucking way, they’re a drag on our economy and, for reasons largely not their fault, almost never have anything meaningful to offer to society. All these fucking Baby Boomers are retiring and those of us in our 20s and 30s are going to be carrying them on our backs for the next 30 years or more.

The worst part, thanks to improved science and medicine, is these fucking old people are living longer and longer and longer, producing little and consuming much in their selfish attempt to stave off the inevitable.

Fucking selfish old fucks.

We all know and maybe even love the old. They’re our grandmothers and great-grandfathers. They’re also our worst enemy, establishing unrealistic and unhealthy expectations for sustained longevity. Fucking jerks.

Have you ever taken a long, hard look at some of these old people? I’m talking about anyone over 70. They’re all fucked up. They look like shit. They’re generally crabby, insolent and demanding. They’ve spent their first 50 or 60 years sucking all the marrow out of life and spend the next 10, 20 or 30 years making life as miserable as possible for the young people around them.

I don’t want to hear about your adorable, 92-year-old grandmother who’s still “full of life” and “sharp as a tack.” For every “adorable” and “active” senior citizen, there’s a good 300 or more who are a fucking mess, incapable of walking or eating solid food or making it to the bathroom on their own.

No one wants to say it out loud, but there’s not much worth living for once you hit 60.

Let’s go down the list of reasons to live and see what we can expect when we turn 60:

SEX: Has to be the No. 1 reason to live for most normal, healthy men I know. And it should be for women. Sure, Viagra and other drugs make it possible for these old codgers to get to the starting gate, but let’s talk a bit about the race and finish line for a second.

You’ve taken your Viagra and you’re ready to roll. Now what? Well, you need (usually) a willing partner. The old lady might be willing to lay there for a couple of minutes as she has for the past 40 years, but what’s she looking like these days? The fact that you’ve taken this broad in every conceivable way since the Kennedy administration further dilutes the experience. Your memory is waning so you can’t even come up with the fantasy material that might get you where you need to get.

The days of doing the wheel barrel or the reverse cowgirl are fucking over. There will be no shower play, no kitchen tables, no standing doggie style, no noggin-thumping on the headboard, no using one hand to strum the guitar while using the other to balance yourself on the nightstand, no changing of positions in midstream, no backdoor rodeos, no auto-erotic asphyxiation, no role-playing complete with props and, for sure, no aerial fucks or gator bumping.

So there you are, buck naked at 67 with your 65-year-old wife on her back and you have to muster the stamina to get those hips bucking enough to create at least a modicum of friction. But by this point you can be sure that your back or your knees or your hips or your wrists or something else critical to the process are shot. Might even be your heart. Probably is your heart. Viagra or not, you have to wonder if it’s even worth putting your body through it all just for an orgasm.

And let’s talk about the orgasm. In my early 30s now, I can tell you that today’s orgasm pales in comparison to the ones I savored at 14 or even 24. Even the best of sex today doesn’t deliver the haymaker I used to enjoy from a garden-variety handjob in my teens. I’ve heard the reverse is true for many women but that doesn’t help me a bit.

At this current pace, I’m almost suicidal when I think about how anti-climatic my climax will be when I’m 40. Now imagine what it will be like at 50. How about 60? Fuck that.

FOOD & DRINK:Ever paid real close attention to the diet of the old? Not fucking good. They can’t eat shit. In their pathetic attempt to cheat death, they’re relegated to fucking bran cereal every morning, some fucking fruit and maybe a tuna fish sandwich for lunch and then a flavorless chicken breast, rice and half a fucking dinner roll for dinner.

Call me a selfish pig, but I like food that has flavor.

I’m sure a good 95 percent of the food I eat today will be completely off limits to me by the time I’m 60, God forbid I live that long.

No more fucking spicy Mexican food, no more spicy anything. Barbecued steak, ribs or burgers? Out. In fact, red meat of any kind? Out. Scratch fast food, fried food, the majority of the pasta family, potato chips, ice cream, pizza and peanut butter. Bacon? Bacon’s out. What the fuck’s left? Fuck fruits and vegetables and chicken and turkey. I eat that shit from time to time, but it’s not what gets me out of bed in the morning.

As a fucking sick joke, take a 75-year-old woman out for lunch at a buffet somewhere and watch what happens.

Don’t forget about beverages. Alcohol no longer exists in your life. Oh sure, maybe a glass of wine here and there, but there will be no more six-packs during the Monday night football game. You won’t even be awake for the fucking kickoff. No more Jack Daniels, tequila poppers or pina coladas, vacation or not. No more nothing.

Yeah, I know everyone has a grandfather who takes a scotch or a grandmother who nurses a Rob Roy on special occasions. And everyone makes a BIG fucking deal about it. Hee, Hee, look at grandma “hitting the hard stuff.” Everyone condescends to and about you when you’re old and all you want to do is to get numb enough to survive yet another fucking Christmas Eve with the family.

SOCIALIZING: Sad fact is many of your friends are dead. Or the wife died so the widower no longer rounds out your foursome on the golf course, dominos table or bridge club. Even those who manage to live aren’t much good to you. They have this problem or that problem or you’ve surely had some kind of falling out over the years. Fuck, it’s tough to maintain friends for more than a year without pissing them off. Now try navigating those landmines for 40 years.

No, your prime socializing takes place with the receptionists at all the fucking doctors’ offices you visit. Or the neighbor who begrudgingly rolls your garbage cans in and out for you every Sunday night and Monday morning. You’re literally dying for a telemarketing call. That’s why no one wants to make eye contact with you on the street or in the grocery store. The slightest hint of recognition or interest in your old bones gives you the green light to waste 10 of my precious minutes talking about the weather or the price of cheese.

Even if you miraculously maintain a solid network of friends, what the fuck do you have to say to each other every day? Tedious small talk is a cakewalk for those of us in our 20s and 30s. Try it when you’re 81. This circle of friends has already heard EVERY fucking story you’ve ever had to tell and vice fucking versa. No one cares about your stint in the fucking Navy or how you worked at Honeywell for 28 years. Everyone at this age has heard every hard-luck story known to man and lived a couple as well.

Family, you say? Bullshit, I say. I dodge my parents and grandparents at every opportunity and I’m not alone. If you’re not rotting away in a retirement community or living as a fucking indentured servant at your kid’s home after Dad passed away, you will only see your kids, grandkids and great-grandkids on holidays and birthdays.

And at these rare gatherings, as my good friend Mike accurately points out, you’re mere decoration. You’re a fucking piece of furniture. You’re largely ignored. You’re a pain in the ass because you can’t hear or see or follow a fucking conversation. Grandchildren ask you questions about “the old days” not because they’re interested but because they’ve got nothing else to talk to you about. You’re fucking out of the loop, old man.

Don’t think so? Take a 33 year-old and drop his or her ass into any inner-city middle school today and see how he or she fares. It won’t be pretty. You think you might be able to “hang” with the young, but the truth is you don’t have a fucking clue. To a 14-year-old girl, a 33-year-old man is a fucking dinosaur. Now multiply that by 50 and you get an idea of what it’s like to be the 84-year-old patriarch at the Thanksgiving Day table.

Worse, somewhere along the way, these fucking old people decide they have the right to say whatever the fuck they want at anytime regardless of who they offend. And society gives them a free pass. Instead of calling these old fucks out for their insensitive bullshit, we coddle them and allow the animosity to fester. Then these old relatives wonder why we deliberately hide the TV remote or, occasionally, put Saran wrap on the top of the toilet seat.

ENTERTAINMENT: Yeah, well this will be brief. The world has passed your ass by and lapped you a couple times, too. One of the few things you’re physically capable of doing (as long as the volume is jacked way up and someone plops your ass down a good foot-and-a-half away from the screen) is watching TV. But the Goddamn satellite system and remotes have so many fucking buttons you’re always one errant click away from snow.

TIVO is no friend of yours. I imagine millions of elderly people staring into their sets, frozen with the little green bar at the bottom of the screen maxed out and wondering why the channel has “stopped.”

And the content of the TV that’s on? Fuck. There might be 922 channels available but at most only 5 or 6 of them have anything that would remotely interest your ass. You’re so fucking old, you’re “learning” about new shit from the History Channel.

Pop-culture only angers you. The clothes, the music, the fucking salacious plot lines. You don’t understand or appreciate it at all, thank you very much, missy. And it’s not like you grew up in the Dark Ages. But at this rate, the mainstream porn I despise so much will be standard programming on Saturday mornings in 2040. There’s nothing you can do. You’re just fucking out of the loop.

Another thing these old people like to do for entertainment and to assert their independence is drive. This is a major fucking problem. I used to think that the only solution was to set an age limit of, say, 60 but that’s not feasible and probably not fair. Instead I recommend the government provide anyone over 60 with free sports cars made of fiberglass.

Since we can’t stop them from driving, let’s arm them with high-performance vehicles made out of the most fragile components possible. All the complicated dials and buttons are a plus. Then turn them loose on the streets. Sooner than later, they’ll fuck up and put them into a wall or another car or back them off a cliff. Yeah, there will be collateral damage to the innocent young people they slam into, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay to get these fucking old people out of my way so I can quickly get to the places I need to get to.

No matter what, when your time comes you’ll be just as much of a pain in the ass as your parents and grandparents were. But instead of doing the right thing and dying at a reasonable 63 years or so, you’ll fucking hang around and hang around until you’re 103 thanks to those fucking bastards at Amgen, Biogen and Genentech.